


Misdiagnosis

by ceralynn



Category: It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia
Genre: Gen, Suicidal Ideation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-26
Updated: 2015-02-26
Packaged: 2018-03-15 07:53:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 548
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3439418
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ceralynn/pseuds/ceralynn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dennis reflects on his personality disorder</p>
            </blockquote>





	Misdiagnosis

Dennis took psych classes in college and firmly believes self-diagnosis to be absolute bullshit. Angsty teenagers looking up symptom lists on Mayo Clinic and WebMD and determining (or, more often, convincing themselves) they have some mental health issue? Institutions like the one he attended exist for a reason, he tells himself, and no one is more trained to diagnose you than a man in a suit with multiple degrees who has never met you before in his life.

But what about self- _un_ -diagnosis? Is that even a thing?

Surely medical professionals get it wrong from time to time. These men and their institutions are not infallible. Even Dennis himself had misdiagnosed Mac as bisexual so many years ago, before it became apparent that nearly all of his "interest" in women was unfocused hyper-masculine posturing.

So is it truly such a stretch for that godawful psychiatrist, in diagnosing Dennis at a mere sweeping glance, to have been wrong?

This is what goes through Dennis' mind over and over as he reads the symptoms of BPD in his phone, late at night while Mac slumbers so peacefully one room over. He isn't like the teenagers he's vilified in his mind; he's cross-referenced these symptoms meticulously with every other website on the topic he could find. He has in his mind the purest, most researched understanding of this disorder that he absolutely does not have, no matter how many examples he can pull out of his life that reflect the symptoms that he's now burned into his memory.

\--

"You watch people slowly kill themselves all the time, right?"

Dennis would never rob the world of himself. Why would he? His life is amazing. Sure, it isn't what he dreamed of as a child. He isn't a veterinarian. He hasn't done a damn thing to help animals at all, really, but he thinks about it and, at the heart of it, was he really that passionate about helping animals? About helping anyone?

Was he ever passionate about anything?

"A man should be able to end his life if he wants to end his life!"

It doesn't apply, Dennis reminds himself. Just like the diagnosis, the _misdiagnosis_ , it does not apply to him.

And neither does the rule about not sleeping in the bar, which is why it's perfectly fine that he's slumped against the counter in the bar bathroom sipping his flask of creme de menth. That rule wasn't created for him, it was created for Charlie and anyway he's not sleeping.

"What do you do with any information? Tuck it deep down and keep an eye on it."

Maybe he hasn't kept an eye on things as well as he could have. Maybe that's it.

\--

"They're kinda growing on me, you know? Loose fit, tacky graphics. Good night shirts, you know?"

Dee isn't right about a lot of things but she's right about this. Dennis lays in his hammock staring up at the ceiling, tracing the sun's outline on his shirt. He thinks of Mac's desperate gambits for his father's attention, assures himself he is not simply clinging to the few things in life his own father has given him. After all, Frank isn't his father, never was. It doesn't apply to him.

He can't be sure that anything does.

\--


End file.
